Geysers and Bison and Elk, Oh My!

A Week in Yellowstone National Park

We live in the West now. We have no excuse not to visit the natural wonders which are, suddenly, not so far away. Yellowstone is certainly high on the list of America's natural wonders. First National Park in the world, one of the largest in the lower-48, world biosphere reserve, etc, etc, etc. Plus I have a thing for geothermal features and, after a long summer of climbing and mountaineering, it was definitely time to relax and unwind with some more casual endeavors.

Saturday - Got a moderately early start and drove 8-ish hours from Boulder to Yellowstone. Pulled into the popular Grant Village campground and were apalled at the number of people in super-size RVs. The lake is nice and much bigger than I'm used to when someone says "lake". Spent a noisy night listening to the various yahoos and then later the large number of bugling elk all around the place.

Sunday - Got up early and hit the Back Country Office. Unlike most of our trips, we didn't have any clear idea about exactly where we wanted to go. We talked to an extremely helpful ranger and got permits for two nights near Shoshone Lake, one of the more popular backcountry areas in the park. Hit the trail at the Lewis Lake TH and hiked 4.7 miles across a plateau that was heavily impacted by the 1988 fire. The new generation of lodgepole pines is about 10 feet tall, but nude trunks still stick up like guard hairs on a wolf. Shoshone Lake is huge (largest backcountry lake in America) and we hiked another 4.5 miles along its steep eastern shore, alternating between hiking high on the bluffs and down on gravelly beaches. After 10 miles, we finally turned the corner and arrived at site 8S3 "Cayote" in the northeast corner of the lake. Beautiful campsite with evening views of the Red Mountains across the way. Cold night with bright Mars and a shooting star.

Amy with her shiny new pack in typical burned area.

Hiking the gravel beach at the east end of Shoshone Lake.

Monday - A long day during which we saw no other humans. We hiked through beautiful woods north of the lake to the western end and the Shoshone Geyser Basin. This is much like the Old Faithful area and several other large thermal areas in this part of the park, but is 9 miles from the nearest road and hence sees little traffic. Indeed, we didn't see anyone for 36 hours on Labor Day itself. Amazing! The geysers and thermal pools were fascinating and the trail faint at times. Hearkened back to our North Island tour last year, but with better weather and heavier packs. After the geysers, we wandered across broad meadows keeping a sharp eye for wildlife. Never saw any, but we crossed a perfectly idylic ford and lounged on its banks for some time. Four miles of hard hiking up and down in the hinterland south of the lake brought us, dog tired, to 8M2 "Moose Creek #2". Not as inspiring as 8S3, but perfectly adequate to our needs. Also one of the few campsites around here where fires are allowed. We reduced wood and ate pudding. Mmmm. Pudding....

Hiking the beautiful forest north of Shoshone Lake.

Typical geothermal terrain at the Shoshone Geyser Basin

Apparently I'm a hobbit! Hanging out at the best ford I've ever crossed.

The west end of Shoshone Lake.

Tuesday - Last day in the woods! We hit the trail and set a feverish pace through what, on fresh legs, turned out to be a beautiful part of the forest. Crossed Moose Creek at a ford after a couple miles (brrr!) and eventually arrived at the main ford of the trip, a 100 foot wide, thigh-deep crossing at the outlet of Shoshone Lake. Rather than retracing our steps on the shorter but boring Dogs Head Trail, we took the longer (6.5 miles) Lewis Channel trail back to the trailhead. We followed the beautiful shallow river flowing from Shoshone Lake as it became broader and deeper. After four miles, we emerged on the shores of Lewis Lake and hiked an interminable few miles back to the car. Total milage about 33 miles in three full days. Not bad!

Evening light at campsite 8M2, our second night on the trail. In the morning, this meadow was covered in frost, but not moose as we'd hoped.

Amy crosses the second and coldest ford of the trip.

Back to Grant to get showers, beer, and a place to sleep. Much less crowded this time and we spent a lovely night in the much more pleasant campground. After three days of essentially zero wildlife in the backcountry, a gigantic bull elk was seen a few campsites over and we walked over to view his impressive rack from a discrete distance. We're used to mule deer in the backyard practically daily. Elk are huge!

Wednesday - After a leisurely moring and partly successful attempt at making pancakes on the camp stove, we headed off to see the touristy things. First stop was Old Faithful, the most popular attraction in the park, probably in all of Wyoming. I'm a sucker for geothermal features of any description and this one is probably the most famous geyser in the world. It was predicted to erupt in about an hour so we toured some other thermal features and returned for what was an impressive but well-expected show. Later we hiked down the paths and saw many smaller but more interesting geysers, hot pools, and so forth. Fascinating stuff! The large mammal trend continued with the resident bison herd grazing amongst the geysers. As we returned to the car, the bison started getting aggitated and a walkway had to be closed. Quite exciting. Bison are very large and reportedly ill-tempered beasts. In large quantities, they are a major force of nature.

From Old Faithful, it was north to other thermal features. We stopped at the Midway Geyser Basin to see the Grand Prismatic Spring. However, I got the trail wrong and we ended up hiking nearly a mile along a nice trail with no access to the spring. We could, however, see this huge area of light blue, red, green, and yellow steam rising from the middle of a flat plain of sinter. Very eerie and mystical. Returning to the car, we found the right trail head and got closer to the Grand Prismatic Spring and several other spectacular thermal features.

We proceeded north seeing other sites including the Fountain Geyser Field, where we ran into Andy Leach (who I climbed Dead Dog with back in May) and some other folks I know by reputation on SummitPost, Artist Paintpots, and Gibbons Falls before checking into Indian Creek Campground. Indian Creek is everything Grant Village and the other large campgrounds in the park are not; quiet, secluded, interesting, and friendly. We set up camp there and then drove 8 miles north to Mammoth Hot Springs for ice cream and some relaxation. On the way back we had a close encounter with a very large bighorn sheep. Another fire was constructed and we stayed up late.

Old Faithful is, apparently, where the buffalo roam.

Beehive geyser does its stuff in the distance. Another bubbling pool in the foreground.

Another mysterious blue hot spring. Looks so inviting, doesn't it? It's about 90 degrees. Centigrade.

The eerie blue glow of Grand Prismatic Spring as seen from the wrong side of the pool.

...and the boardwalk around the Midway Basin. Amazing from ground level, even more impressive from the air!

Obligatory bubbling mud photo, in this case, from Artist Paint Pots.

Thursday - Another tourist day. Driving north, we encountered a herd of bison in the road at the narrowest point of the pass just above Mammoth, the same place we'd seen the bighorn yesterday. The road at this point is a steep cliff on the left with an overhung drop-off to the right. Two narrow lanes, both filled with about 30 bison, are suspended out over the void. We stopped and waited as the bison leisurely made their way past nearly scraping against the side of the car. They came in all sizes but the bulls are intimidatingly massive up close, taller than the car and extremely front-heavy. I was careful not to make prolonged eye-contact with any of them as we were not in any position to pick a fight. They outnumbered us, outmassed us by a large margin, and were occupying the lane farther from the deep chasm. Two cars back were a couple guys on motorcycles. That must have been interesting!

Have you herd the traffic report?

Not just big horns...

With the excitement finally over, we started with a visit to Mammoth Hot Springs, probably the second most visitted attraction in the park, and for good reason. Impressive white terraces, mostly dry, and some active springs cover a large area. All colors of bacteria living in the water and lots of sulfurous steam. We hiked a couple of loops and saw the place thoroughly. Canary Spring was my favorite since we were there early in the morning and had the place to ourselves. Impressive green and white colors.

The New Blue Spring at Mammoth.

Canary Springs at Mammoth in the early morning light. Beautiful!

The colors are from bacteria, and the bacteria type depends on the temperature of the water. Nifty!

Spray soaks the base of Lower Yellowstone Falls.

Finally, some yellow stone in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Impressive!

It had been a long day, so we stopped in at Fishing Bridge for (cold, brrr!) showers, and at Grant for some food cooked by someone else. Not wanting to spend another night at Grant, we drove south to the lovely Lake Lewis campground (similar in style to Indian Creek of last night) and set up camp for our last night in the park.

Friday - We'd originally planned on spending nine days, but the idea of real bed and a chance to do laundry before the hecktic fall resumed was too much for us. We headed south out of Yellowstone but couldn't resist the allure of the Tetons, the often-overlooked neighboring park. The two parks are about as different as can be imagined. Yellowstone is mostly visitted by RV-tourists and families who never get more than half a mile from the car (or RV, or land-yacht). Grand Teton is the domain of hikers and climbers and there isn't much for the casual tourist to do besides gawk at the incredible mountains and then move on. As a Colorado resident who spends a lot of time in the mountains, I have a pretty high threshhold for what I concider jaw-dropping scenery. The Tetons win in comparison to almost anything in Colorado. Jagged peaks soar over a mile out of the flat plane of Jackson Hole. Glaciers and towers everywhere. Your basic mountaineering fantasy come to life.

We booked one-way passage across Jenny Lake on the nice tour boats that opperate there, and quickly made it to Hidden Falls (not all that impressive) and Inspiration Point (which was inspiring but not paradigm-altering). From there, we diverged from most of the tourists and headed west up Cataract Canyon. This was inspiring! Mount Owen, Teewinot, and the Grand Teton soared above us on the left and some impressive cliffs towered over talus and beaver meadows on the right. I've got to get back there to climb as soon as possible! We hiked another mile or so into the canyon under intermittent rain (the first bad weather we'd had the entire week) before turning around. Instead of taking the boat back across the lake, we hiked 2 miles along the south shore on easy trail, arriving footsore at the visitors center in a hail storm after a total of about 6 miles.

Holy cow! The Tetons from Jackson Hole.

Teewinot, Grand Teton, and Mt. Owen from Cascade Canyon.

It was only mid-afternoon, but we decided we'd had enough and headed for the Gros Ventres. Amy was here in the summer of 2002 for geology field camp, and we drove out the long road past the impressive Gros Ventre Slide to stay at the campground she'd lived at for a week. Very nice National Forest campground with not a soul around. We camped in a lovely site next to the river and collected firewood as the sun went down on the Red Hills. Unfortunately, the wind came up just as we finished dinner and we never got to have that last fire. We guyed out the tent and spent one last night in the wilderness.

Saturday - Drove out into Jackson itself for a much-deserved big breakfast at the Bunnery. Jackson is a lot like Boulder, Aspen, or any other uber-affluent mountain town. Lots of neat stuff mixed in with even more expensive tack. The weather was grim and cold and we didn't feel like sticking around much. We drove south, stopped in Pinedale to visit another Field Camp site, then winged south and east to Boulder as fast as possible.

The first snow arrives in the Tetons as we head for points south.

It was a long, relaxing, and rewarding trip. Yellowstone is such a part of the national heritage that everyone should visit once. I was surprised at how empty the backcountry was and even the tourist stuff wasn't too bad concidering it was Labor Day weekend.

The Wilderness Journal

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